Re-Visioning History: Artist Statements

May 22nd, 2010 - July 17th, 2010

Private: Ben Houge: “Transportation Is Getting a New Look,” generative video, and digital prints on art paper, 85 x 48 cm, 2010

Remnants of posters on a city wall form a map of history. Messages plastered in redundant profusion fade into obsolescence; they are torn down and pasted over with new messages, similarly fleeting. Conflicting voices withcompeting messages create a cacophonous counterpoint. Peel off the layers to reveal the third dimension of the city’s evolving public collage: time.
“Transportation Is Getting a New Look” employs custom computer software to algorithmically emulate this process. The program excises sections of old propaganda posters, and then pastes them onto a digital canvas in constantly varying configurations. Each virtual stroke defines an area to be statistically filled with snippets of the original image in varying densities and opacities. Sometimes the program focuses on one part of the source image, resulting in a consistent shape or repeated gesture. Sometimes the differences are greater: a small detail may be enlarged, or an image may be reduced to a texture or color.
As new images are overlaid, the foreground is constantly receding into the background; the present forms a canvas for the future.

Qian Rong: “A Torch Illuminates the Local Snacks,” watercolor and ink on craft papers, 2010 “Spy Movies and Local Snacks, No.1,” watercolor and ink on paper, 2010

In this work I use painting, photographs, collage and other materials to emulate the look of old film posters. Food is closely related to our lives; we take delight searching out delicious food and enjoy it on a daily basis. History is habitually neglected but it is something that we must face. Food plays the part of a trail or bridge [which links the past and the future], which leads us to question and think about history. In this work, true is false and old and new are mixed together to create a sense of the absurd and narrow the gap between history and observation.
To consumed in our daily lives contains the strange smell of history – don’t forget distinguish and think deeply when you chew. History is not really very far away, in reality, many things can always be found in the shadow of history. The past lives and accompanies us but is often not perceived.
Many elements in this work bear a strange familiarity. Actually the food in this work, so-called delicacies are just popular everyday local dishes. This kind of food can been seen everywhere in huge quantities, just like the people themselves [also in large quantities]! Food acts as a kind of filler, an offering to the long river of history. But history is not eternal. The foods that our ancestors ate, we can still eat today: the methods of the past can still be used today.
What is history? History is right now. Reality is full of the debris of history. This is “Re-visioning History.”

Private: Robert Lee Davis: “We Build Houses We Will Never Live In,” Mixed Media, 20.5 x 15.5 cm, 2010

The idea behind these small-scale works on paper is based on conversations and observations of workers from Shanghai’s surrounding provinces and their attempt to keep up with the uneven pace of urban development.
Newspapers highlight these discrepancies. I read that a student from Anhui lost his will to study due to the fact that he could not afford a computer or cell phone as his classmates; a report featured a new mother who abandoned her baby rather than face the child’s long term health needs; one food service worker remarked how he could never afford to eat in the restaurant in which he worked.
I observe how migrant workers contribute to many of the developments in our city, but rarely reap the fruit of their labors. In viewing these posters I was struck by the differences between the contributions of workers during the 70s and the contributions of workers in 21st century Shanghai. No posters celebrate the achievements of workers; no monuments are erected to highlight the current contributions of the working classes. Today’s migrant communities are often marginalized from mainstream society. Hence, they build houses they will never live in and serve food they could never afford.
The works have been collaged using images from contemporary magazines and newspapers. Their size miniaturized to better illustrate these differences and invite viewer reflection.Robert Davis

Su Chang: “Street Garden,” Fiberglass Sculpture, 49 x 49 x 50 cm, 2010

These propaganda images reminded me the sculptures found in gardens which are different from the unfamiliar stainless steel sculptures which showed up later in the 1990s. Unlike the later, these sculptures are lovely and full of humanity and simplicity. These familiar shapes were found everywhere in street gardens although they carried grand aspirations of science and speed. However, they were ultimately engulfed by waves of modernization which desired to make progress breaking human feeling into a fragmentized physical world – leaving our minds empty filled only with a kind of homeless sense of anxiety.When you're hungry and thirsty you'll swallow whatever you can get. In this time of continuously swelling desires, an intellectualized humanity, a simple love and a search for ideals, is a very precious thing indeed.

Zhang Dali: Speech Presented in Berlin at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt

This project includes some of the most vital and recognizable photographs from the past sixty years of Chinese history, as well as many more commonplace pictures. Some of these photographs have been displayed countless times - those with which we have become intimately familiar - while others have been exhibited only once. Perhaps the general population has no way of knowing that hidden behind, there lies another version, or perhaps even two versions. In some instances, it is impossible to locate the original version because the negatives themselves have been doctored.
These photographs were altered and fabricated in order to be distinguished from those lying in historical archives. They constitute a secondary mode of history. This secondary mode is still a component of history, but appears like a shadow: beneath the light, it can be elongated or condensed, real or imaginary. The shadow reveals the ugliness of the original. Thus, people will naturally fix what they consider ugly, and touch those objects that are visible to them.
I will broadly outline a few of the notable characteristics of these images. First, doctored photographs are one of the typical forms for displaying political objectives. They can serve as a means of executing specific tasks or avoiding blame. They follow the historical vicissitudes of that period, as well as the rise and fall of political figures. For example, people who are familiar with Chinese history will understand the background behind photographs of Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, and Lin Biao. Second, some images were manipulated for aesthetic purposes - namely by emphasizing an important figure - a process that Wu Hung has termed “sublimation.” This was achieved by giving the figure a central position in the picture plane, removing clutter in the background, etc. Third, some of these photographs evidence a psychological compulsion to repair, like word processors automatically correcting mistakes. The people responsible for this were mostly factory workers, whose jobs entailed printing and retouching photographs. Fourth, some images were completely fabricated in order to create a particular scene. This borders on a painterly approach, wherein non-existent elements are added in order to depict a necessary idea.
I consider these photographs to be a critical part of our history. In these past sixty years, they have guided our lives, studies, work and family values. Because of their existence, a separate history has been produced and cultivated: a secondary mode of history.
March 24, 2006
Translated by Peggy Wang

 
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